This is a well made film, unfortunately overlooked despite its star ensemble cast and production. Clocking in at 168 minutes, it probably would have made a better mini series. Robert DeNiro does a great job directing this. However the casting of Matt Damon as a man who gives his life up for the CIA was perhaps not the most inspired choice. I agree it's hard to empathise with him, but I saw that as the limitations of Matt Damon's acting abilities. Taciturn and not particularly expressive, Matt Damon also hardly ages much across the decades that this film spans - he's too constant and thus never progresses as a character.

Nonetheless, the movie is engaging - even though it could have benefitted from more tension. As it is, the DVD's deleted scenes reveal entire sequences that would've made the movie even longer. Given the film's multiple subplots, leaving these scenes out didn't hurt. To sum up, The Good Shepherd plays/ reads like a book, and for those confused about the plot...watch it with subtitles. The ensemble cast makes it worthwhile - Angelina Jolie does a great job as does William Hurt, John Turturro, Alec Baldwin, and everyone else.

DeNiro may have been trying to channel his Cold War version of the Godfather here, but this is a slow burn and Damon is no Pacino. Still, a sterling movie and monumental effort from a screen legend.

I would guess I'm not the only person to have trouble sorting out the twists and turns of a spy film's plot - the layers of betrayal, to be convincing enough to keep even veteran spies plausibly in doubt, have to be very confusing. As such, the morning after, I've got these questions.

1) Is William Hurt's Phil Allen character, apparently based loosely on Allen Dulles, guilty of embezzling money? guilty of taking money from the Soviets? or merely guilty of financial indiscretions which make him susceptible to blackmail? Dulles' financial issues are an interesting footnote to history - that he and his brother as lawyers represented American firms deeply invested in Germany after World War I and remaining so in Nazi Germany but with several layers of financial secrecy through Swiss banks and business fronts - but there has been no suggestions that his loyalty was compromised.

2)Who is Ulysses? Is he a KGB spymaster, or a highly placed KGB spy in the Western spy apparatus?

3)Getting away from plot to character for a moment, Angelina Jolie's character, Wilson's wife Clover/Margaret, rings untrue in one way. She meets him as a wild, beautiful, rich girl. She's seemingly luring him into a sexual liaison because she's expected to find a husband from the right social class and feels pressed to do so with the war threatening to take most eligible men away. I have trouble translating her into the unhappy, drunk, passive wife and mother that lives uncomfortably with him for another 15 years after the war. Far more likely is the suggestion dangled early on when Wilson calls on the phone from occupied Berlin and hears his young son let slip that she's going out with someone, planting the suspicion in his mind that she's being unfaithful, and he retaliates by allowing himself to be drawn into a fling with his translator. The plot uses this to show that this was a onetime thing on her part, and meanwhile Wilson himself allows himself to be compromised when the translator turns out to be a Russian spy. But I would find it more convincing to believe that Clover isn't a girl to suffer the lack of male company for very long, and to have left him for another man by the war's end. I also can't see where the wild girl disappears to. This is unconvincing.

4)I didn't realize until late in the movie that Wilson's Russian counterpart was not, himself, the (fake) defector. I'm not too good with faces. But I thought that was the basis for Wilson's trust in the defector.

5)With the rapid crosscutting between scenes and time periods, and little change in Wilson's appearance to help signal the changes, I was initially confused over the thread - a hair? a violin string? an antenna? - found in the book, was found on his own desk or that of the (fake) defector whom Wilson in the adjoining scenes is confronting in the man's home late one night.

6)I had some trouble separating out the fellow Bonesmen - the guy who talks Wilson into staying in Bones following the humiliating initiation scene and who Wilson follows up the ranks at the CIA, vs. Clover's brother who is killed in World War II, vs. the Senator (her father?), etc.

7)Wilson's ethnic remark to Pesci's character, seemingly meant to be emblematic of WASP bigotry, isn't convincing. Pesci's Joey Prima mobster character is in Wilson's face a bit, busting his balls about his ethnicity. I just see the usually buttoned up Wilson letting loose for a moment to give it right back to him. The scene is still worthwhile dramatically, though, as Wilson gets to witness the close-knit nature of Prima's family, as Prima bickers with his daughter about taking good care of his grandchildren at the beach.

8)At Yale, the word was that it was Scroll and Key, not Skull and Bones, that had the inside track at the State Department and the CIA.

9)Some reviewers see Turturro's character as brutal. Only in one scene is he portrayed as slapping around someone during an interrogation, and the stakes are pretty high when he does. There is no groundwork to suggest that he has a brutal streak in his nature. I find his character's most important function as to highlight the unfair ethnic-class structure at the time. The character is older than Wilson at the outset and also a college graduate, but merely a noncom because he's Catholic and Italian.

There were tons I loved about this movie. Its examination of the conflicting loyalties to country, family, school, secret society and job, and the toll this takes over a lifetime, is formidable. I think its period scenes of 1930s Yale and the Skull and Bones milieu are excellent. I think, however, that the book "The Company" (more than the TV miniseries based on it)does a better job covering the same material with the same themes while rendering it far less confusing.

My questions about this are not a reflection of the film's flaws, rather of my own obtuseness and the film's subtlety. I probably need to watch it again.

Well, let's get the weaknesses of this film out of the way first. Matt Damon (playing the lead role of Wilson), while likely cast for his ability to bring a silent, brooding, inscrutable intensity to his roles (which this lead role requires), is not really a good fit--too boyish in his looks, not enough gravitas to be playing someone as powerful as a CIA head guy, even one in his early years. I just didn't buy him in this role at initial viewing, though it had nothing to do with his acting abilities. And in fact, once this initial impression is gotten over, one recognizes that Mr. Damon actually delivers a very solid, nuanced performance; and his boyish looks actually become an asset whose strength lies in a sense that his character is, actually, a 'puer aeternis'--a perpetual boy who never learned what it means to be a true man in the sense that fatherhood would require. Next, Angelina Jolie was grossly miscast as the lonely, bitter, betrayed housewife--though Ms. Jolie manages. I believe these casting miscues distracted from the film's forward motion, and so cost the film greatly I think, with much of the viewing public.

But on to the strengths. I must strenously disagree with the Amazon editorial review of Jae Ha Kim, who gets it backward: While elements of casting were weak, the plot/theme was brilliantly played out, with a perfectly paced 2 hours and thirty minutes (roughly). De Niro's decision to use flashback sequences to tell this story required this kind of extended time frame, as they are less direct from a plot-telling standpoint; and the 'flashbacks' device very usefully allowed the audience to focus on how Wilson has arrived at his present position, plot-wise and thematically; the flashbacks also created tension and suspense, as this film is very much a 'whodunit.' The cinematography was also meticulous, complementing the director's attention to plot detail, which added (along with the flashbacks) to an effect of seeing the unfolding of events through Wilson's very meticulous eyes.

And beyond the plot development, we have what makes this film excellent, and highly underrated: The themes of 'loyalty' and 'fatherhood' set against a backdrop of National Security. The 'loyalty' theme involves the question, "which loyalty is most important: To country, to family, to fraternity (i.e., secret society running things), or to self?" The 'fatherhood' theme involves the exploration of Wilson's own failures as a father to his son, which are instigated psychologically by his own father's failure to BE a father to him (Wilson's father takes his own life when Wilson is a boy); it also involves Wilson's becoming, in a sort of twist, a 'father to his country' in becoming one of the founding 'fathers' of the CIA. De Niro (Directing) interweaves these two themes brilliantly. And in this, the film's true plot (from a thematic standpoint) is about Wilson's personal journey from fatherless boy to a man who's own attempts at fatherhood are undermined and betrayed by his psychological inability to be a good father to his son. The terrible irony is that the personal qualities that compromise his own fatherhood abilities are the very ones that make him an effective spy. Pointedly, the film askes, "is this a worthy tradeoff?" And using this thematic query as a launching pad, this film is rightly seen as being a critique of not only the CIA, but of the nature of international "spying" in general. Boys are left fatherless through confused notions of "loyalty" to--what? And are the costs worth it?

Ultimately, this film seems to be arguing that a person's inability to honor himself and his family first, both corrupts and aids, ironically, his attempts to honor so-called 'greater' national and international interests; that America herself, in a way, is left fatherless by those running it, because those running it lack the psychological ability to understand what true "fatherhood" (either of a child or a country) means, by virtue of themselves having been left fatherless by their predecessors' own misgebotten sense of loyalty. At the same time, the film poses the question, "what if, in the world of spying and counterintelligence between nations vying for power and survival, self/family values are not an asset, but rather a liability?"

Thus the film's title, "The Good Shepherd," offers both a sarcastic irony, and a lament. An irony, as we watch these fatherless fathers of the nation fail their own families by giving greater loyalty to secret societies and notions of national "duty," and by compromising their own moral high ground through twisted values of leadership. And a lament, for the world we live in is admittedly dog-eat-dog, and would appear to require a set of twisted values on the part of our leaders to ensure our survival.

I couldn't find anything in this film remotely entertaining about this film. Sure some facts are meticulous, but as far as ever caring about any of these characters-nada. It's just slightly better than Clooney's Syriana. At least I was able to make heads or tails what was going on in this one. I just still didn't care. Pass this one by if you can.

This is a very boring movie. Endless dialogue that leads to nowhere. The character development is poor. The plot is confusing and unrealistic. This is painful to watch... 2 hours and 48 minutes of agony on a screen.

This film will find a passionate audience among those looking for an intellectual, adult and intense experience.

De Niro makes a surprising move here into spy territory - not modern Bourne type stuff (despite the presence of Matt Damon) but more like an American John Le Carre type story, in its understated events and emphasis on character. It's a noble endeavor, at times wonderfully shot - however, it is ultimately too flawed to succeed as entertainment.
The story revolves around the creation of the CIA, seen through the eyes of Edward Wilson (a composite of several real life characters). It plays as a character driven story showing what can make a man choose a life of permanent paranoia and secrecy, and the impact that has on his life. In this way the atmosphere around the time of the new Agency's genesis is portrayed rather than a strict blow by blow account of how it came to be. A superb and committed cast have been gathered, (including a blink and you'll miss it cameo from Joe Pesci), and there is a clear feeling of the proceedings oozing talent, from art direction and photography, through to actors and music.
However, there is something about the pacing that is not quite right - at 160 minutes, we should have some significant moments of drama to drive our interest on, but somehow we are left with a spy story of non-people and non-events... a spy movie without suspense. There's an interesting enough story arc for our main character, and the audience is asked to be intelligent enough to fill in some gaps - but the padding has turned what could have been an atmospheric and informative movie into something bloated and dull. This is no epic or definitive account.
Regular readers of mine will know I am no huge fan of rapid fire MTV style editing a la `Armageddon' and its ilk - but a movie still has to have some drive and entertainment value. That's missing here, despite the core having some very interesting things to say about the disease of loneliness and what it does to a man. Sad to say, no endorsement from me on this one, even though it has moments that really make me want to like it.

Interesting, if disquieting, view of the kind of organization apparently necessary to a nation to stay afloat in today's world: Situation ethics; disposable loyalties; diverse and highly sophisticated technological tools; unswerving but troubling idealisms; personal costs to participants in anguish and guilt; incremental compromises of original principles; patriotic ruthlessness.... Our eventual realization that both our friends and our enemies have similar organizations, for similar reasons, creates in us, the viewers, a more-in-sadness-than-in-anger awareness that parallel organizations have probably always existed and, of necessity, probably always will. The film's dialogue is often muffled, oblique, and hard to understand---in keeping with its atmosphere of secrecy---but the viewer thereby tends to lose the detail thread of what's going on at the moment. A film to watch several times, but not one where the viewer ends up envying the participants' lives.

An excellent film, The Good Shepherd, brings to the screen the events and people that brought about the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The film follows the life and career of Edward Wilson as he plays his role in laying the foundation for one of the best intelligence agencies ever to be set up.
Matt Damon, Robert De Niro, Alec Baldwin, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon, and the rest of this AMAZING cast, have truly outdone themselves with their performances, which are outstanding to say the least! All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100% and it really shows!
The acting, the setting, the plot, the dialogues, and the music are all wonderful and along with the mystery that accompanies this film will keep you on your toes throughout the entire 168 minutes.
In short, The Good Shepherd is a movie definitely worth watching as it will surely provide for an evening's entertainment.

Don't even try to detect whether this movie is about the actual work of the spy or his unhappy family life. Something about the both. At the end of this thinly fictionalized account, one might even get persuaded that the work at the CIA is only for dweebs.
The beginning somehow resembles "The firm", where assiduous youngster ingrows into the closed society. But that's where the similarity ends. Edward Wilson (Damon) isn't Mitch McDeere. Despite his long hours spent in a library, nonchalance about women and inscrutable expression, Wilson simply can't be a raising star of the CIA, even if these vestiges have to testify that he has developed supreme analytical skills.
In fact, during the whole movie one can't stop asking, where does his authority come from? Even in those couple of episodes, when he instructs to execute the operations with a muffled voice from his home bureau, he appears to be a totally innocent bystander in a chaotic chain of events. Despite a group of famous actors, the main character of the film left me confused.

I appreciate, love and respect every single key actor in this movie...but still I found it insufferably long and dull. I love political intrigue, wordy movies and am a fan of theatre, Silence of the Lambs was a great movie. Casino Royale great....But Dear Jesus, how this movie tested my patience!! I am not a person to fall asleep during movies. Usually my curiosity keeps me awake long enough...I could not survive THIS movie.

I loved this movie. Parts of it were difficult to watch, but it is a highly interesting, engaging film.

The movie tells the story of Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), an idealistic young poetry student at Yale. The son of a high-ranking federal judge, Wilson is tapped to become a member of the elite Skull and Bones society. After accepting, he is drawn further into a world where the expectations of others will govern his decisions. After a passionate roll in the hay with Clover (Angelina Jolie) at a Skull and Bones retreat, Edward learns she is pregnant. Though he is in love with another woman (the hearing-impaired Laura, played beautifully by Tammy Blanchard), Edward weds Clover.

The film is set at the end of World War II, when the OSS/CIA were operating/forming. Due to the strong connections of previous members (many of whom went on to work in the military and in government), several young men in the Skull and Bones society are chosen to work in intelligence and counterintelligence. Edward begins work, and the audience watches as he sacrifices one thing after another for his career. Protecting the United States is a noble calling, true, but Edward pays a high price for his devotion. He doesn't even see his son until the boy is more than five years old because of his overseas work. His relationship with his wife, what little there was of it to begin with, deteriorates due to neglect. He can't trust anyone, and so he doesn't.

What's fascinating about this film for me is that it isn't all flash and dazzle, like other spy films you may have seen. This film shows the slow, quiet work of the CIA. It shows the strategy behind the organization and what kind of power it wields. It also shows the birth of intelligence gathering in the United States, and it is pretty darn intriguing to go poking into some of those corners of U.S. history. More than anything, though, it illustrates what working in the intelligence industry does to the individuals who commit to it. (And it ain't pretty.)

I think Damon plays a role different from his "type" in this film. Edward has such a character arc. He starts the film with a wonderful, tender relationship with Laura. Though he never seems to be jolly, he is an earnest boy who is not without humor. But by the end of the film, Edward is so careful. He is so silent. He is damaged. Damon expertly paints Edward in all the tones of the things he does not say. This performance is a precise study in minimalism.

Angelina Jolie has some aching moments as Clover, as well. Being married to a ghost takes an enormous toll on Clover, and I have rarely seen Jolie play a character with such frailty. It was quite touching.

The films also boasts fine performances by Robert DeNiro (who also directed), William Hurt, Billy Crudup, and Alec Bladwin. I found this movie riveting, with both character and plot to spare. Acting is fabulous, and the subject matter couldn't get much jucier. Worth seeing.

There's an old joke in Hollywood that goes: (Q.) What are the four most frightening words an actor can ever speak? (A.) "I want to direct." When the actor is Robert Di Niro, (certain to be surrounded by adoring Yes-Men), the results can be as frightening as an exploding cigar or poisoned martini.

The Good Shepherd is a true "cameo-fest," no lesser a light than Joe Pesci gets about 5 lines (although they are memorable.) Alec Baldwin was probably done his scenes in half a day. (Di Niro himself provides a listless shuffle-on.) While Jolie, Turturro, Gambon, Hutton, and Hurt are around a bit longer, none are around long enough to help.

Di Niro also shows us his Hollywood juice through funding; the film is beautifully produced, time and place are evoked exceptionally well, clothes, cars, interior design, all done with great care. Why then is The Good Shepherd longer than a Sunday afternoon double-header between two last place teams? For starters, the run-time is a shockingly self-indulgent 167 minutes, pushing the 3-hour envelope. For another, absolutely nothing happens. It would be tempting to blame this on Matt Damon, (still unconvincing when playing an adult, much less an adult in a position of authority), or on Eric Roth, who wrote the screenplay. But Damon, as the "anti-Bourne," is clearly doing what's he's told, and Roth's screenplay might have been good had it been significantly tightened.

As readers of John Le Carre know, the actual work of spies, the tradecraft, is extremely boring. The fascinating aspect of their world lies in the personalities of these people, their emptiness, their loneliness, their complete inability to trust, their facility with lies until they arrive at the point where they're barely able to believe themselves, and the devastating emotional toll all of this takes. Carre's work walks you through this inner landscape in a way film never can, because film is a visual medium, and watching a stone faced Matt Damon for the better part of 3 hours tells us nothing - which is rather the point - his ability to reveal nothing serves him well as a spy.

Di Niro gets an "A" for hubris, he strong-armed a lot of "names" onto the set. And he gets an "A" for ambition, it's a complex story of inner turmoil, difficult moral choices, layers of deception, and the clash between idealism and pragmatism. But he gets an "F" for implementation and direction, averaging out to a "C." Where The Spy Who Came In From The Cold succeeded because of its laser-sharp focus; bloated scope and lack of character insight cause The Good Shepherd to resemble the Bay of Pigs.

While very slow moving, the film still covers a lot of historical territory. Young, idealistic college boys join the preWWII espionage agencies in Britain and the US because they want to live lives of importance and make a difference. Three generations of Yale Skull n Bones, cronyism, the planting of moles in Soviet and American spy establishments, torture, careerism, the competition between the US and the USSR for Nazi physicists, the Cold War, the space race, and finally, the Bay of Pigs fiasco -- these are the big themes of this film, which spans 25 years in the life of Edward Wilson, the young spy who joins the OSS to atone for his father's traitorous mistake. Add to that the sexual mores of the times (c. 1940) and Edward marries for honor, not for love. The film casts a critical eye on espionage and the people who undertake it.

I liked Matt Damon in this film so much better than in the endless Bourne car chases, although his character is very hard to like. Unlike some others who have written here, I did not think Angelina Jolie was in any way wasted in this role. She poignantly plays an emotionally unstable woman who uses her sexuality to catch herself a husband, but ends up finding herself caught in a loveless marriage, so unsuited to be a CIA spouse. I liked her much better here than in A Mighty Heart. I agree with other reviewers who said that Robert DeNiro did a much better job directing this film than acting in it. William Hurt does well as Edward's boss. Alec Baldwin plays a crusty FBI man. Billy Crudup's British spy is so likeable that you know he will be a problem in the end. John Torturro as aide to Wilson is excellent, as are Oleg Shtefanko as Wilson's KGB counterpart and nemesis and Eddie Redmayne as Wilson's son.

The atmosphere, technology, and fashions of the times are also well represented here, which also makes gives the film its claustrophobia. This is a film which improves with multiple viewings, because every bit of dialogue adds a crucial detail to the plot. It's a very sober enterprise up to and including the last scene, where we see Matt Damon as Wilson plodding diligently down the long hall of the new CIA wing where, as reward for all he has endured over the course of the film, he will be in charge of counterespionage efforts. His pace and posture make it clear that he heeds the call of duty with a heavy heart.

GOD!!!!! Please spare me from interesting previews and beyond boring movies. No plot, no action, no sex. Wasting of a great cast. Too bad I can't give it -5 stars. Avoid this movie!!! The pain of a root canal (I've had at least 4) is nothing to the pain of such boredom. I'm embarased for everyone who produced this movie.

The Good Shephard is one of the best films I've seen in a long time.
Based on a true story, it really explains a lot about people were recruited, how the CIA was developed, how it worked during the cold war... The acting was also excellent. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!

I hated this movie. From the start, the movie (while portraying itself and a historically based drama) plays with history to make a politically motivated piece, designed to mislead those without a working knowledge of history.

Within the first 20 minutes, I was worried what the film was going to portray. Damon's character is contacted by a General William Sullivan, who has been tasked by the President (FDR) to create a secret service, knowing that the US will eventually be pulled into WWII. He tells Damon that the soon to be OSS wants Ivy League Blue Bloods like him, not 'jews, negroes or Catholics." Sullivan smiles and essentially states that he can say the latter because he's a Catholic.

The man who created the OSS was William Donovan. The writer plays with the Irish names but the character is Donovan. However, the portrayal of Donovan is purposefully wrong: Donovan wasn't anti-Jewish, anti-black or Catholic. He is famous for allowing anyone, from right wing to Communist into the OSS as he was dedicated to destroying Nazism. This is something I have gleaned from reading at least 3 OSS books, one of them written by a man who was an admitted 60's activist who idolized Donovan because while he never limited himself by ideology (he was a a Republican who FDR trusted), he just wanted to defeat Nazism. Thus, from the outset, the movie is falsely portraying the creator of the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, as racist, anti-semetic and intolerant.

Damon's Character:

Is cold and unemotional throughout most of the movie, except when he falls for the deaf girl. This is done to let the viewer know that the future CIA betrayer has a soul. Their most significant date is at an almost all black jazz club in 1940. Thus, Damon's character (who eventually betrays the Bay of Pigs operation) isn't a traitor: he's a tolerant man who loves disabled women and is caught up in circumstances beyond his control, where he finally sees the truth.

Damon's character is cold, unable to relate to his own son. As a a father he is purposefully distant, seeing fighting Communism as more critical than raising his son. This means CIA are all cold and distant, Therfore, their mission (defeating Communism) is improper.

Angelina Jolie:

Her character plays an odd dual role: she is Damon's unloved wife: mother of a child of a night of passion but never truly loved by Damon who's true love is a deaf woman.

Her role is not appropriate to her stature in Hollywood (a stature I disagree with). In this movie, it is manipulation for the director, DeNiro, who plays with her fame: how can Matt Damon ignore such a hot woman (Jolie) for a less attractive deaf one? Jolie got Brad Pitt but she is incapable of winning Damon's character's heart. He must be cold. To make matters worse, he cheats on Jolie with a matronly German at a time when he purely hates Communists. HE MUST he nuts if he wants an ugly German over a hot Jolie.

Viva Cuba:

Damon eventually betrays the Bay of Pigs invasion which would have overthrown Castro but Hollywood has romanticized Castro and Che, so the decision (of Damon) to betray the US in ordder to assist Castro is forgiveable and endlessly romantic.

Pure Propoganda:

As 'Sullivan' becomes more anti-Communust, he admits to suffering more and more to diabetes, which requires them to chop off his legs: thus, America is rotting from its fixation on Anti-Communism.

To add to this 'subtle' rotting analogy, there comes a the Soviet defector. After being injected with LSD, he launches into a soliloquy where the defector admits the USSR is a paper tiger with no spare parts and no ability to fight; it's a creation of the 'military industrial complex' (yes, the Soviet uses the Eisenhower phrase) to maintain the power of said complex... therefore, the Cold War is a hoax: they were never a threat, just a pawn in the game of the Capitalist Industrialists!

This, of course, ignores the 70's where Communism spread worldwide. A country with no spare parts somehow sustains a 10 year war in Afghanistan, requiring Reagan to authorize the dispatch of Stinger missiles to win the war. It ignores the 1956 invasion of Hungary, the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, the relentless efforts to turn Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Ethiopia and many other nations into Communist pawns or the endless violations of SALT I, II and the ABM treaty. Millions suffered under the yoke of communism, yet the Communists are innocent? Preposterous. Why is it I know of no Conservative who fails to conclude Nazism was an evil yet I can find Liberals who will defend Communism?

This movie exploits our short memories. DeNiro's position is that the Cold War was never a hot one, so the Communists were never a real threat. This sickens me and anyone who knows how Eastern Europe suffered, but their names are hard to spell, so who cares. At least, that is De Niro's view. Is it yours?

First I thought the good sheperd would be some kind of "JFK" film....but the story (ie creation of the CIA) is far most unknown but still very interisting.

As for the hd dvd, audio is excellent but doesn't have the opportunity to unchain as the movie run smoothly the all time...
Picture is perfect even in dark sequences with extreme dark blacks.

Enjoyable

Fans of "Breach" should definitely see this fascinating view of an agents life. Mostly focused in the 1960s and some more current proceedings that influenced our foreign policy and the very fiber of our intelligence network. Matt Damon plays "Mother" deftly, he is known as a cold calculating agent by his counterparts. We see his lifestyle take it's toll on his family, and the true conviction of many CIA agents. If you enjoy the dryer spy movies that tell more fact than fiction without lots of gadgets, you will probably enjoy this movie. Good quality DVD with a few extras and decent replayability.

Plenty of people have reviewed this film and have pretty much given the whole storyline. I'm going to spare you the details of the story and get down to why I can't recommend this movie.

Like many people, I was excited about a spy movie that featured great actors, and had Robert De Niro directing. The problem with the movie is that it is a complete bore. The main mystery/plot of the film is similar to the one in the Kevin Costner movie "No Way Out". Unlike "No Way Out", this one doesn't keep you on the edge of your seat. Like "The Godfather", we bounce back and forth from past to present. The problem is that we are intruduced to too many story lines and too many characters. It was difficult to tell what the goal of the story was. Matt Damon's character might as well have been played by a robot. He shows absolutely no emotion. It's hard to root for characters like this. The movie has a few decent moments. But at almost three hours long, the movie feels over done. A good 45 minutes of this movie could have easily been cut out.

I think there might have been a decent story somewhere in there, but either the writing or directing or both stepped in its way. We are constantly being sidetracked by subplots and characters with little meaning. Add in a ridiculous revelation at the end that you could see coming the moment his son announced he wanted to work in the CIA, and this movie just doesn't hold up. The effort was there, but sometimes a movie's parts are better than the whole.

i was so happy that this movie was announced to show on HBO and finally i saw it right now, boy, i am so bored, it game desire to sleep. Fact or fiction? well none worked for me.

Robert DeNiro's 2006 "The Good Sheperd" is a thinly fictionalized account of the founding of the Central Intelligence Agency. It features an array of talented actors, promising plot material, and some incredibly atmospheric cinematography. It is also a long, dark, unhappy journey into a world so complex as to almost defy translation into a feature length film.

The story centers around Edward Wilson, a counterintelligence officer who at the opening of the movie is investigating a security breach affecting the failed CIA-sponsored 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. In a series of extended flashbacks, we learn that Edward was a young, idealist Yale graduate recruited into the Office of Strategic Services at the start of the Second World War. He learns his trade from his British counterparts, already locked into a cutthroat duel with Nazi Germany. Edward moves on to Berlin at the close of the war to recruit former Nazis and to size up the Soviets, who will be America's postwar competition. In particular, he meets his Soviet counterpart, a spymaster codenamed Ulysses, who will haunt his career for the next two decades.

Edward returns to America in 1946, to a new organization that will become the CIA and to a loveless marriage with a woman he got pregnant right before the war. His duties will involve him in CIA adventures in Guatemala and Cuba and in handling Soviet defectors. As the movie circles back to the present, Edward traces a series of clues to the shocking source of the leak on the Bay of Pigs. The answer will threaten his career and what remains of his family life.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson as a quiet, dedicated but guarded man; he learns the hard way that no one can be trusted. The hazards and hard moral choices of his career turn a likeable poetry-loving student into a man all but emotionally inaccessible by movie's end. Angela Jolie puts in a anguished performance as Wilson's wife, who lives a sterile life with a man often gone and withdrawn when home. Alec Baldwin has a nice turn as an FBI agent who works with Wilson on a number of cases. John Turturro is superb as Wilson's long-time assistant. Billy Crudup and William Hurt play fellow OSS and CIA colleagues.

This movie gets a lot of things right about the espionage business. The founders of the OSS and CIA relied on ties among Ivy League alumni as a substitute for a vetting process. The spy and counterspy business between the US and Soviet Union did become a wilderness of mirrors. The Edward Wilson character seems loosely based on James Angleton, the CIA counterintelligence chief who spent years looking for Soviet moles in the CIA.

The story is extremely complex, even for those familiar with the history of the CIA. The average viewer may be challenged to keep track of the characters and their motives. The focus of the movie is really the effects of the spy business on its practioners; action is infrequent apart from the deaths of several agents. This movie is likely to appeal primarily to serious fans of the spy business and the spy movie genre.

Yes this movie is complex. Yes it's slowly paced. But that combination, along with some superb acting and a great story is what makes it so gripping.

If you don't like having to pay close attention to a movie to enjoy it, you won't enjoy this. However, if you want a scintillating story that continually moves, builds and shapes to a dramatic final conclusion, then you'll greatly enjoy this.

This is a truly fascinating story, whether true or not.

This is a very hard film to love, eventhough it resonates from a good screenplay and top notch acting. Damon is in top form and a stoic spook, his character is hard to like much less love, I really could not for the life of me figure out why Jolie stays with him for so long; he is a bad husband and an even worse father, it is heart wrenching to watch his young son beg for his father's attention and Damon all but ignore him. Damon puts country above all else and its amazing how startlingly obtuse he is about his families needs. The film is beautifully shot and though quite lengthy its does not lag. I really liked Michael Gambon in this, he is not what he seems and his advice to Damon, though not heeded, was the most valuable intelligence Damon gets..get out while you still can. Damon's character does several things in this movie, that seem so out of character for someone so measured and with very good survival skills, but i suppose it's to propel the narrative, but still it's perplexing. Be sure to watch the deleted sceens, because, it includes a story line that should have been kept in the movie, De Niro should have cut some of himself out of this film and left some of the deleted sceens in. There is a great sceen toward the end with Joe Peci, and Peci asked Damon, and im perapharsing, he says...we italians have family and church, the irish have the irish nationalism, the jews have tradition, and he asked Damon, what do you have..meaning the WASP establishment I suppose, and Damon says..I have the united states of america, you people are only visiting..it's shocking in its honestly perfectly illuminates how a person of his time and place would have thought..in a word..scary!

"The Good Shepard" is a slow paced film that really surprised me because its countless images filled of semiotic profile. It's about a devoted functionary of the CIA in those hard times from the first days of the WW2 until the not so well reminded and frustrated invasion of the marines in Cuba.

The use of greyish lights (Please remember Sidney Lumet's The verdict) is transcendental around practically every single frame of the movie, the faces are involved into a diffuse atmosphere, as the truth they keep is. On the other hand we will assist to the progressive and unstoppable crumbling of the marriage of this efficient agent, who sees what's going on around his personal life, and is incapable to make nothing to avoid it.

William Hurt, Angelina Jolie, John Tuturro and Matt Damon are stunning every one of them, from their perspectives, make of this personal film of Robert de Niro appears as one of the most intriguing and devastating films in years around the times in which the C.I.A. was best known as the O.S.S.

One of the top films of the year.

While this ostensible "spy thriller" is clearly more of a serious drama with something important to say, Eric Roth's chunky screenplay and the stellar cast would've been much better served by some of the kineticism you find in a more disposable version like Tony Scott's "Spy Game". The sad history of the CIA and the destructive impact of misguided patriotism on personal relationships are depressing enough as it is without the lugubrious pacing director De Niro insists on giving them here. There are one or two great scenes, but you might easily sleep through them. Matt Damon is surprisingly bland in a weird, one-note performance that lacks any capacity to evoke empathy, and is completely at odds with the character arc the film apparently tries to trace. This probably accounts, in large part, for why so many have found this film unengaging. It's a shame, because the story it tells is an important one.

I gave this film 5 stars for its courage and willingness to trust the intelligence of the audience to unravel a complex plot and complicated relationships. This is not an easy film for those who don't wish to solve the multiple puzzles we are presented. The film reflects a philosophy that both character analysis and espionage are complex, multi-layered, and often are not what they seem on the surface.

The film uses a crisis situation at the CIA to unfold the history of the CIA as well as the history of the agency's top administrators that parallels the development of the agency and its mission. The Bay of Pigs invasion is a failure and it appears that Fidel Castro and his Soviet handlers were well aware of where the invading force would land on the coast of Cuba. This crisis is revisited repeatedly as we see the development of the CIA and the development of Edmund Wilson, an OSS Officer who becomes a CIA founder.

Matt Damon plays a resolved, cold character, Edmund Wilson, who is dedicated to the protection of his country even though there are multiple consequences for him, his wife, and his son. He receives two odd, manipulated video and audio tapes that begin to reveal who might have tipped off the soviets and Fidel that the Americans were coming. These tapes are all part of a complex effort to neutralize Wilson by the KGB.

The film traces the development of the agency from its OSS roots in World War II. Wilson becomes a spy and is located in London during the war where he is involved with some of the spy and counter-spy activities with the Nazis. His old English Professor at Yale turns out to be a spy who mentors him during the war on intelligence gathering and analysis. However after the war in post-war Berlin he gets to fully experience and develop his craft in a cat and mouse game with the Soviets as they try to find Nazi scientists that both wish to capture and recruit for the emerging cold war.

Yet all these espionage experiences also teach him that he can not trust anyone as he experiences duplicity from trusted friends and associates. Gradually Wilson becomes more aware of his KGB rival and they play a deadly and complex game to undermine each other's attempts at intelligence gathering. For example, Wilson attempts to get Nazi scientists out of Germany before the Soviets can obtain them. His translator is eventually revealed to be a spy who is helping the Soviets obtain the scientists or at least trade Jewish scientists for Nazi scientists.

The Soviet spy known as Ulysses sends decoy officials to give disinformation to the CIA, he follows Wilson and tries to disrupt his marriage when Wilson has a one-night-stand with an old girlfriend. Eventually the pain and intrigue gets closer and closer to Wilson, trying to find a way to compromise his integrity and put him in a position to give information to the Soviets.

I found the film very interesting and complex, requiring me to pay attention to subtle relationships, images, lines of dialogue, and understated movements. This gives the film a feeling of authenticity. In addition, the KGB and the CIA both played very dirty and this seems very realistic. We see spies killed once they are no longer needed and have too much information to allow to live.

The cast was superb with Matt Damon playing a cool, hardened man who has sacrificed much for his country yet his sacrifice is silent and only he really knows the extent of what he has lost and how little he has personally gained. In fact, the man had not really gained personally at all except that he has been given intellectually devious competition against which he feels he must prevail. He sacrificed his first love to marry the pregnant sister of his Yale friend and co-member of the Skull and Bones club.

Angelina Jolie plays the flirty passionate Senator's daughter who becomes married to a cold man possessed with a mission to protect the USA. She is neglected and resentful. Years of absence from the home distances husband and wife until Edmund can only feel compassion for his wife for all she has endured to support his career and dedication.

William Hurt plays the handsome, smart, first director of the CIA who overplays his hand by becoming a board member of a coffee company that benefits from the CIA assassinating the President of a Latin American nation that was nationalizing the businesses within their borders on a path toward Communism. Edmund Wilson gentle lets him know that the game is up and thus allows him to resign and move on without scandal.

Robert De Nero plays the role of a General who heads OSS and then lays the groundwork for the CIA at the end of WWII. Alec Balwin plays a cool detached FBI agent who is an ally for Wilson and allows him to identify problem personnel within the CIA. Billy Crudup plays his British counterpart and mentor who eventually is revealed to be something other than what he presents. Joe Pesci plays a Mafia don who assists in the Bay of Pigs invasion when Castro takes over 4 of his casinos in Havana.

Eventually the Bay of Pigs crisis is resolved from the intelligence aspect and the culprit who has said too much is revealed. Heavy prices are paid.

Those that serve their country with their minds are often overlooked and under appreciated since they make personal sacrifice that only they know have been made. The sacrifices are not made just by the individual who is in government service, but also by those that love him/her and those that he/she loves. This intelligent film honors all those individuals. It is brave motion picture making.

I enjoyed this movie very much. Everything about it was good. There is only one flaw that was very distracting to me. Everybody in the movie ages... everybody but Matt Damon. He looks exactly the same as an aging CIA man as he did when he was a young homoerotic Skull and Bones pledge. Other than that I thought the movie was great. Oh, and casting John Boy Walton as Damons son was kind of bad too. The guy wasn't bad but he was the A-typical 'weakling son of the strong dad' role.

This is, in general, a film that kept me riveted to my seat. Performances good except for Angelina Jolie, who shouts rather than acts during parts of the film. Billy Crudup could have used additional coaching with his English accent. It required more than one viewing for me to unravel a plot that went back and forth between present and past, but it made sense after a couple of viewings. Matt Damon is excellent as is the rest of the cast. No one should take this for history, but it does provide what seems to be some insight into the mentality of CIA and its Soviet counterpart, KGB during the Cold War. One of the most interesting episodes is what happens to a KGB agent who is mistakenly believed to be a plant trying to discredit a true KGB defector. The movie has a feeling of reality though it is a fictionalized version of certain characters, periods and events in the history of CIA. Intelligently written. Robert DeNiro has done a stellar job as director.

This was an enjoyable movie to watch, but honestly, it lacked pace, action, and adventure.

I bought this movie because of the cast, and they performed brilliantly as always. It's not the actor's fault the script was slow paced.

I do recommend this movie to add to your collection. It's enjoyable, but not a blockbuster in my personal opinion.

I give it a 3, right down the middle.

Give it a shot, and judge for yourself.

--James Michael Collins--

There's an interesting and important story somewhere out there but this is not it. I haven't seen such stilted acting in a long time and a more convoluted story than this one. Now, I can do complex movies, such as Syriana, but this one takes the cake.

"The Good Shepherd" is an interesting film about Edward Wilson (Matt Damon), a bright young man who graduates from Yale University and goes on to become one of the founding members of the CIA. The movie is set against a variety of important events in U.S. history, which makes the whole government/political aspect of the film very detailed and accurate. However, there's no spark on the emotional side of things. Damon delivers a strong performance as much as the script allows, but his character is a hollow shell of a man who lacks any emotion or feeling, and therefore makes it virtually impossible for the audience to sympathize for him in any way. This movie is almost three hours long, which seems like a lifetime when you haven't developed any sort of attachment to the main character. The supporting cast of the film is very impressive and includes the likes of Angelina Jolie, Joe Pesci, and Robert De Niro (who also directed the film). However, I don't think any of the characters were well-developed enough to allow the actors to display their vast talents, and therefore this film kind of missed its mark for me.

If there ever was a worn out spy, Matt Damon is definitely the one in his fine portrayal of Edward Wilson, CIA agent from priviledged family and Yale education. I have not seen a character like this since John Le Carre's agent Smiley. Edward is a quiet man, who keeps his emotions and feelings to himself. He is also damaged, since as a child, he witnessed his father's suicide. The emotional void of having a father figure in his life, pushes him towards seemingly caring man such as his mentor at the university and eventually towards career in CIA. Edward is pushed into a marriage to a woman (played by Angelina Jolie) he barely knows and the marriage is doomed from the start. Their son, the bond that keeps the marriage together is also a reminder to both of them of their poor match. As we trace Edward's career thru some of the important events of the cold war, we learn about him as a father, husband, lover and the unscrupulous secret agent. It is difficult to imagine that sensitive young man, interested in poetry and above all loyal to the people close to him would resort to the dread of a life of a spymaster full of secrets and lies. But then, as the film reaches its conclusion we almost get to think of him as a an on the suicide mission of his own. He is not looking into pulling the trigger on himself, but he is walking on the tight rope, close to falling at any time. Then again, he is so worn out and alone, that after al, he has very little to lose in this game. Directed by Robert DeNiro with wonderful cast of actors.

I got lost more times than I have fingers watching this movie. The story keeps switching back and forth between 1961-65 and 1939-45. Now it does tell you at the bottom of the screen what year you're in but it switched so mamy times that I got lost once and couldn't figure out if I was in the 40's or the 60's and to tell you the truth at that point of this almost 3 hour movie. I really didn't care. I also had trouble keeping track of who all the characters were. The director does not do a good job of explaining things. You just have to figure it all out for yourself. And though I did watch the whole movie and I do understand what it's about. I think I would have to watch it about 2 more times to really get everything. But I'm just not willing to invest 9 hours on this. I'm sorry I wasted the 3. I watched it with my girlfriend and we kept asking each other "Do you understand what's going on"?, "Who's this person"?, "what year are we in"?

I have other issues with this movie other than the convoluted story. The whole movie is filmed very, VERY, dark! It's like you're watching it with sunglasses on. There's one part in the movie when they get a russian spy to cross to their side, and they pretty much just take him at his word and consider him one of them. Later on in the movie another russian claims to be the same guy and wants to cross and says that the other Russian is a mole. Instead of taking this guy at his word, they torture him for several hours and when he sticks to his story they give him LSD as a truth serum and not only does he STILL stick to his story but he jumps out the window killing himself. All this gives the agents NO reason to believe that the guy they're trusting MIGHT actually be the mole!!! They don't torture him, they don't even question him. They just go on believing him. And guess what. He turns out to be the mole. Matt Damon finds this out by noticing a feather coming out of a book that one of his spy friends gave the mole. He then peels back the inside cover of the book reveiling a passport and other incriminating evidence. I mean this is truly stupid and really made the whole movie stupid. If you're going to make a movie this confusing it better at least be good and make sense and this movie does not. And why is Joe Pessci in this movie??? His Character is meaningless from what I can tell. Robert DiNero - A Bronx Tale this is not! Try again.

I tried my hardest to fall in love with Robert De Niro's "The Good Shepherd." All the elements were there for a great film - fantastic material (the birth of the CIA and the Cold War), great cast, and more-than-ample budget. Unfortunately, the total is far less than the sum of its parts - and far more tedious.

Matt Damon plays Edward Wilson, privileged Yale undergraduate who gets inducted into America's least-secret secret society, Skull and Bones. Given this access to privilege, Wilson receives a unique opportunity - to get in on the ground floor of America's new secret service, the OSS (the forerunner of the CIA). Over the next few decades, Wilson will play a key part in the evolution of the Cold War.

This should be exciting stuff. Terrific authors have had loads of fun with the very same material - John Le Carre, Robert Littell, James Ellroy - and their novels are riveting page-turners. Thanks in large part to Damon's depiction of Wilson as an extremely cold fish, "The Good Shepherd" is largely an exercise in exposition and tedium. Events transpire, characters grow old or die young, and bitterness and recrimination stalk the land. Sometimes that works in a movie - this is not such an occasion.

Put "The Good Shepherd" on the shelf with the Great Missed Opportunities of recent years - movies that should have been terrific and yet failed to live up to expectations.